Four security officers have been killed in militant attacks in Yemen.  It follows a series of massive aerial attacks reportedly involving US drone that killed as many as 65 militants, including three “leaders” of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).

Attackers on motorcycles gunned down three colonels – two from the intelligence agency and one from the military police – in Sanaa on Monday and early Tuesday.  Gunmen also killed a deputy security chief Tuesday in the central city of Harib.

The killings come as DNA tests are being carried out on the bodies of militants killed in a devastating series of drone and Yemeni Special Forces operations from late Saturday through early Monday.  Authorities want to confirm that regional al Qaeda leader leader Nasser al-Wuhayshi and bombmaker Ibrahim al-Asiri were killed.  Wuhayshi was a former deputy to Osama bin Laden.  Asiri is a Saudi who US says made the bombs used in a string of high-profile cases, such as the failed “underwear bomber” who tried to down a US-bound passenger jet in 2009.

Since 2002, US drone and missile strikes have killedan estimated 753 to 965 people in Yemen, the overwhelming majority of whom were militants.  But at least 81 of the dead were civilians, according to a study from the New America Foundation, a group tracking the US military drone program.